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Strangers and Brothers
Strangers and Brothers
Oct 2, 2024 6:33 AM

Author:C.P. Snow,Adam Godley,David Haig,Bill Wallis,Juliet Aubrey,Full Cast,David Tennant,Anne-Marie Duff,Stephen Moore,Danny Webb

Strangers and Brothers

The full-cast BBC Radio adaptation of C. P. Snow's epic series about the English establishment across the twentieth century

'A vivid portrait of British academic, political and public life' Guardian

'A very considerable achievement... It brings into the novel themes and locales never seen before (except perhaps in Trollope)' Anthony Burgess

In 1920s Leicester, Lewis Eliot must escape the drudgery of a council clerk's office and his provincial lower class background to begin his decades-long rise to power. As the years pass, and Lewis progresses to successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement, he faces in his own life and the lives of those around him collapsing marriages, terrible illness, the politics of academia, Nazism, nuclear weapons, the price of power, and the ever-present realities of war.

The New York Times praised the book series, saying, 'through [them] as in no other work in our time we have explored the inner life of the new classless class that is the 20th century Establishment'. John Betjeman claimed the books were 'as full of life as life itself'. The Strangers and Brothers series captures perfectly the ever-present battle between political and personal integrity Lewis must face, as well as all the upheaval and social change of the two world wars and the decades that followed.

This adaptation stars David Haig and Adam Godley as Lewis Eliot, Bill Wallis as George Passant, Juliet Aubrey as Margaret Davidson, Stephen Moore as Herbert Getliffe, and Danny Webb as Percy Hall, with a full cast including Jeremy Swift, David Tennant, Anne-Marie Duff, Iain Glen, Claire Skinner andTim McInnerny.

Directed by Jeremy Howe and Sally Avens

Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, January-June 2003

Full cast:

Narrator/Lewis Eliot - David Haig

Young Lewis Eliot - Adam Godley

George Passant - Bill Wallis

Marion - Laura Doddington

Sheila Knight - Anastasia Hille

Herbert Getliffe - Stephen Moore

Percy Hall - Danny Webb

Charles March - Jamie Glover

Leonard March - John Standing

Katherine March - Carla Simpson

Ann Simon - Emma Woolliams

Mrs Getliffe - Suzanna Hamilton

Revd Knight - Brett Usher

Young Francis Getliffe - Andy Taylor

Winslow - Clive Merrison

Young Brown - Philip Franks

Roy Calvert - Adam Levy

Young Jago - David Calder

Nightingale - Jeremy Child

Chrystal - Matthew Marsh

Crawford - Hugh Quarshie

Mrs Jago - Joanna Monroe

Sir Horace Timberlake - Ian Hogg

Young Hector Rose - Rupert Vansittart

Houston Eggar - Peter Marinker

Willy Romantovski - Kenneth Collard

Gilbert Cooke - Anthony Calf

Margaret Davidson/Margaret Eliot - Juliet Aubrey

Rosalind - Anne-Marie Duff

Betty Vane - Carla Simpson

Martin Eliot - Tim McInnerny

Walter Luke - Jeremy Swift

Irene - Claire Skinner

David Rubin - Rolf Saxon

Sawbridge - Adrian Scarborough

Edgar - Andrew Wincott

Captain Smith - Sean Baker

Sir Hector Rose - John Carlisle

Sir Thomas Beville - Robert Laing

Austin Davidson - David Collings

Jago - Sean Barrett

Dawson Hill - Peter Blythe

Skeffington - David Acton

Francis Getliffe - Geoffrey Whitehead

Brown - Jonathan Coy

Donald Howard - David Tennant

Roger Quaife - Iain Glen

Lord Collingwood - Ronald Pickup

Caro Quaife - Julia Watson

Lord Gilbey - John Woodvine

Diana Skidmore - Avril Clark

Phillips - Richard Firth

Osbaldiston - David Leonard

Brodzinski - Christopher Rozycki

Ellen Smith - Emma Bown

Monteith - Paul Venables

Trafford - Stephen Critchlow

© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Reviews

Authentic, compelling . . . another winner for a northern author who has her home county written right across her heart.

—— Lancashire Evening Post on A Daughter's War

Emma brings earthy authenticity to her ever-popular sagas

—— Peterborough Telegraph

Praise for Emma Hornby:

—— -

'Compelling. A gripping and powerful tale of vengeance and reprisal'

—— Val Wood, author of Children of Fortune

'Emma Hornby writes strong, working-class women with heart and humour. The book is an absolute joy'

—— Glenda Young, author of The Miner's Lass

'I loved the twists and turns. The emotional pull on my heartstrings was exquisite. Emma Hornby is a natural storyteller who always delivers and, from the first words to the last, my attention was captured. Read this story at your leisure, read it on the bus or on the train, in your lounge or in your bed - but you must read it. Storytelling at its best'

—— Sheila Riley, author of The Mersey Mistress

'Edge of your seat drama, a book not to be missed!'

—— Lindsey Hutchinson, author of The Hat Girl from Silver Street

'A moving picture of an abused mother's love for her family, beautifully written and enthralling from the very first word'

—— Gracie Hart, author of The Baker's Girl

To read K-Ming Chang is to see the world in fresh, surreal technicolor. Hers is a dizzyingly imaginative, sharp-witted voice queering migration, adolescence, and questions of family and belonging in totally new and unexpected ways. Both wild and lyrical, visionary and touching. Read her!

—— Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

Epic and intimate at once, Bestiary brings myth to visceral life, showing what becomes of women and girls who carry tigers, birds, and fish within. K-Ming Chang's talent exposes what is hidden inside us. She makes magic on the page.

—— Julia Philips, author of the National Book Award finalist Disappearing Earth

[A] vivid, fabulist debut . . . the prose is full of imagery. Chang's wild story of a family's tenuous grasp on belonging in the U.S. stands out with a deep commitment to exploring discomfort with the body and its transformations.

—— Publishers Weekly

Fierce and funny, full of magic and grit, Bestiary is the most searching exploration of love and belonging I've read in a long time. Family, immigrant, queer, magic realist-none of these tags can quite capture the energy of this startling novel, which is all of those things, yet somehow more. K-Ming Chang has created something truly remarkable.

—— Tash Aw, author of We, the Survivors

Bestiary is crafted at the scale of epic poetry: origin stories that feel at once gravely older than their years, yet viscerally contemporary. Chang knows well that the life of a family-marriage, immigration, queer coming-of-age-can so often feel like a wild and tender myth, being spun and unspun by its members, again and again. These are fables I wish I'd had growing up.

—— Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not the Heart

Told by many voices, Bestiary is a queer, transnational fairy tale whose irresistible heroine is a Taiwanese American baby dyke. Written in a prose style as inventive and astonishing as the story it tells, to read it is to enter a world where the female body possesses enormous power, where the borders between generations are porous and shifting. A worthy heir to Maxine Hong Kingston, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and Jamaica Kincaid, K-Ming Chang is a woman warrior for the 21st century-part oracle, part witness, all heart.

—— Jennifer Tseng, author of Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

This book astounded me, unsettled me, and left me envious of K-Ming Chang's talent. Bestiary is a gleaming, meticulously crafted gem. I could spend all day marvelling at Chang's prose; these are sentences you want to climb inside, relish, and read again and again just for the pleasure of the language.

—— Jessica J. Lee, author of Turning and Two Trees Make a Forest

K-Ming Chang is ferociously talented, one of my favorite new writers. She understands the language of desire and secrecy. Here is a book so wise; so gripping; so mythical and dangerous; so infused with surreal beauty, it burns to be read, and read again.

—— Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

An illuminating celebration of female artists and their often overlooked place in history

—— Stylist

Passionate, enthusiastic and witty... I wish I had had this book as a teenager

—— The i

A touchpoint for a new generation who will go on to define the future of those exhibitions, collections, and auctions

—— Dazed Digital

This eye-opening read is an overdue revisionist history of art - ignoring the pale, male canon to celebrate female artists who have been overlooked for centuries

—— Best non-fiction books of 2022 , iPaper

The early centuries are thin simply due to the paucity of surviving work by talented women painters but her story becomes fuller and more persuasive the closer it gets to today. Hessel is clear-sighted and impartial enough not to over-claim for her subjects but show that they are full of interest and every bit as worthy of attention as their male peers.

—— Michael Prodger , New Statesmen

Katy Hessel's first book The Story of Art without Men is a necessary and urgent book. A truly empowering title, the volume celebrates the rise of women artists and recentres them within art, political and social history. Many of these artists have been presented at Serpentine and their visions are getting the visibility they deserve through the fantastic visuals and Katy's thorough research

—— Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine

When women are literally written out of history, Hessel conveys how radical, powerful and vulnerable their lives and art were - and still are. Through moments of rage and celebration, this story fundamentally centres creative freedom: the stifling of it, and the lengths endured to claim it.

—— Tiarney Miekus , The Sydney Morning Herald

This passionate and personal telling of what has been an invisible history will bring revelation to anyone entering the world of art and its histories.

—— Iwona Blazwick, Director, The Whitechapel Gallery

Although women have always made art, for far too long, art history has been told as the story of male achievement. Katy Hessel's The Story of Art without Men is a brilliantly readable and lively corrective. Outraged and celebratory, it's chock-full of female trail-blazers - from the Renaissance until the present day - who forged their way, despite facing the kind of hurdles that would stump most mortals

—— Jennifer Higgie, author of The Mirror and the Palette

Compiled with zip and wit, even the informed reader will learn something new on every page - we really cannot recommend it enough

—— The Fence

A sumptuously illustrated history... at once broad in scope and meticulously researched

—— Breeze Barrington , TLS

This book has blown my mind. Really passionately recommend

—— India Knight , Sunday Times

An extraordinary eye-opener, and very readable ... we badly need books like Hessel's

—— Evening Standard

Hessel's beautifully written 500-year survey is a welcome, necessary, addition to the bookshelves

—— Claire Armitstead , Guardian

Highly readable and lavishly illustrated... a rich storehouse of groundbreaking female art

—— Liz Hodgkinson , The Lady

Astonishing

—— Bella Mackie

This book changes everything. As soon as you open it, it's like you've opened a box of lit fireworks - out soars great artist after great artist. Her retake on the canon has changed it forever

—— Ali Smith , Observer

Hessel possesses that rare quality of a public intellectual, whereby she can distill vast amounts of knowledge and history into something accessible, relevant and joyful

—— Pandora Sykes

Extraordinary

—— L.A. Times

Honest, wholesome entertainment

—— Daily Mail

Utterly addictive

—— Glamour

Exquisite writing and a story enriched by the power of abiding love

—— USA Today

Full of romance, drama and snappy dialogue

—— People

Eminently readable and richly imagined

—— Publisher's Weekly

Hilarious and romantic. I couldn't put it down

—— Sarah Jessica Parker
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